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Creator of Android Andy Rubin Nears His Comeback, Complete With an 'Essential' Phone (bloomberg.com)
From a report on Bloomberg: Rubin, creator of the Android operating system, is planning to marry his background in software with artificial intelligence in a risky business: consumer hardware. Armed with about a 40-person team, filled with recruits from Apple and Google, Rubin is preparing to announce a new company called Essential and serve as its Chief Executive Officer, according to people familiar with the matter. A platform company designed to tie multiple devices together, Essential is working on a suite of consumer hardware products, including ones for the mobile and smart home markets, one of the people said. The centerpiece of the system is a high-end smartphone with a large edge-to-edge screen that lacks a surrounding bezel. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, Rubin discussed the smartphone with mobile carrier executives, including some from Sprint Corp., people familiar with the talks said. The smartphone, according to the report, would go on sale around the middle of this year and will cost nearly as much as iPhone 7 ($649, off contract).
This project will be dead within a year.
This guy parachutes into the middle of the most competitive market in the world, where manufacturers do everything short of killing someone (well... there's Samsung, but I don't think it was intentional) to gain market share, and hopes to take over just because he "made Android"?
Completely delusional.
And he's already arriving late. Alexa is the top dog in home assistants, and many other manufacturers are already moving into the space (HTC, Samsung, Apple, etc).
This guy doesn't have a chance.
The article talked about their phone have a large screen with no bezel, edge to edge. Am I the only one that thinks that is not desirable? Surely too much of anything is not a good thing. I already have troubles on some phones with small bezels with my fingers activating things on the screen while holding the phone. I'm not a two-thumb person (don't really understand how people can actually use two thumbs at once to type out messages on an onscreen keyboard... I can't do it); I hold the phone in one hand and use my finger of the other hand. The lack of bezel makes this a lot harder!
I just shake my head at where phones are going these days. Super thin and awkward seems to be the destination. No wonder AI is going to be so important in the future to help us use these things!